The Guardian’s revelations that our privacy is no longer our own has caused huge public outcry, the tinfoil-hat brigade is in a furore, normal folk have become concerned at what governments are peering at, and most importantly the nefarious are sat back gobsmacked. PRISM, if your at all shocked that such government devices exist, your naive; if your angry, then your possibly delusional.

RANT WARNING! Our freedom, our ability to stroll the streets or fly the airways, is almost entirely reliant on a – very real – war on terrorism. As news flashes across our television sets – Syria – and our soldiers return from the fronts of war – Afghanistan – we perhaps need to pause and consider what price that freedom has cost. If we aren’t thankful that we weren’t one of the 3 thousand troops who gave their lives in the name of democracy in Afghanistan then perhaps we’ve become disconnected.

The graphic images of war and death beamed to us by television networks isn’t an example of what we face, it’s what we face. And what privacies have we given up – in order that our streets don’t look like a Boston Bombing – someone reading our emails, a government employee checking over our social media posts or an analyst trawling though our text messages, again, what have you lost? Certainly not your life – unlike the 3000 lives lost on September 11 2001, you can surely be thankful that you weren’t one of the 20,0000 patriots who were wounded in the line of duty, defending our freedom to like on Facebook and plus on Google.

No, it seems that the cost of surveillance on the general population is naught! Unless of course you have something to hide, or wear a tinfoil-hat. While I don’t disagree that The Guardian has done a splendid job revealing PRISM, and presenting the world with another anti-espionage proponent – Edward Snowden – what have they truly given us, a safer community, more freedom? This author thinks not. Truth and lies, are very personal, we tend to take a lack of trust – or being lied to – as an infringement on our own integrity. Being deceived isn’t what this is about, it’s much much bigger than our individual integrity, it’s about our safety as a society :: Read the full article »»»»

Device cameras of the not-too-distant future will be able to project images in three dimensions, it sounds like the stuff of science fiction right!? A team of physicists at the Australian National University – ANU – believe they are on the verge of making it a reality :: Read the full article »»»»

Australia’s Federal Parliament has passed it’s controversial data retention laws, with both major political parties voting in the legislation. The new laws will force telcos to keep records of phone and internet use for two years and allow security agencies access the records.

Telcos already retain the data, however at varying durations in an unregulated environment. Australia’s Attorney-General Senator George Brandis says the legislation – which passed through the senate with 43 votes to 16 – will strike the right balance.

The cost of retaining the information is set to be partly covered by the taxpayer in what the Government described as a “significant” contribution. There are concerns telecommunications companies will pass on the rest of the cost to consumers :: Read the full article »»»»

As Google, Apple and Microsoft scramble to patch a long missed security flaw it might be timely to remember how we got here. Way back at the latter end of the last century – the 1990s, when Netscape browser was all the rage and – SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption was brand-spanking-new, the U.S. government wanted control over export of “weapons grade” encryption.

Its theory was that domestic communications could benefit from stronger, 128-bit encryption, but ‘backdoors’ should be available to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement when it came to foreign communications, the concept of weaker, “export grade” encryption was born.

Turns out that this theory and it’s legacy backdoor, a vulnerability that we’ve come to know in recent days as ‘FREAK’ still exists in up to 30 percent of U.S. web servers. It’s a sad example of how zombie-security from the era that gave us grunge can come back and bite us on the posterior.

Meanwhile, Apple and Google are saying they’ve developed fixes/patches – though we note Apple has yet to deploy – to mitigate the ‘Freak’ security flaw. Initially thought to be immune, Microsoft released an advisory which warned hundreds of millions of Windows PC users are also vulnerable to the security vulnerability :: Read the full article »»»»

Authorities in the United States have unveiled charges against two Vietnamese nationals and one Canadian in connection with a computer fraud scheme to steal more than 1 billion email addresses.

The incident was the largest known data breach of names and email addresses on record.

Indictments in the case accuse two Vietnamese nationals of hacking into at least eight major email services from February 2009 to June 2012 and stealing the email addresses that were then used for various spam and marketing schemes.

The scheme netted at least $US2 million from the marketing of various products and services, according to the US Justice Department.

Those charged with hacking were Viet Quoc Nguyen, 28, and Giang Hoang Vu, 25, both Vietnamese nationals :: Read the full article »»»»

China-tech watchers are saying China has all but blocked the last remaining ways for people to access Gmail, Google’s email service.

Experts say Gmail traffic in China was shut down last week after Chinese authorities apparently plugged the third-party applications that allowed users to get around existing hurdles. Only a trickle of emails have got through since.

Gmail is the galaxy’s largest email service, it has however been largely inaccessible from within China since June last year, coinciding with the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

But users could still access the service by using third-party mail applications, rather than the webpage. Gmail users could access emails downloaded via protocols like IMAP, SMTP and POP3, allowing users to communicate using Gmail on apps like Apple iPhone’s Mail and Microsoft Outlook :: Read the full article »»»»